(First appeared in the August 12th edition of the Vermont Standard)
By Eric Francis
Standard Correspondent
WHITE RIVER JUNCTION – A White River Junction couple have been charged with selling drugs at the bar at the American Legion in downtown White River Junction.
Kyle Fellows, 48, pleaded innocent to two felony counts of sale of cocaine and to drunk driving – first offense – and his girlfriend, Catherine Cook, 49, pleaded innocent to a single felony count of selling cocaine following an undercover investigation that began in March.
Hartford Police Officer Kevin Wilson said that in late March a cooperating informant told police that he had just run into Fellows at the Legion and Fellows had allegedly told him that he could “get anything they wanted…(but) cocaine was the easiest thing for him to get” at a price of a hundred dollars a gram. “The CI advised Fellows sells cocaine at the American Legion, the Filling Station and Than Wheelers and that he is currently operating his own business on Hartford Avenue in White River Junction,” Wilson wrote in an affidavit filed with the court.
Wilson said the first sting was carried out on April 15 when Fellows allegedly asked the informant to meet him at the Legion and then had him come into the men’s room where police, listening on a wire device, said they heard the informant “asking Fellows if he was keeping the good stuff for himself.”
“Fellows’ reply was, `No’, he gets the leftovers,” Wilson wrote, adding that the informant came back outside with 1.8 grams of powder that tested positive for cocaine.
The second undercover buy was carried out on April 29 at the Legion and this time police said they were able to see both Fellows and Cook greet the informant outside the club on South Main Street and then walk inside the bar where police said the informant allegedly purchased 1.4 grams of cocaine directly from Cook as she on a bar stool next to Fellows.
On June 3 police dealt with the couple again when Hartford Police Officer Larry Muldoon spotted a brake light out on Fellows’ yellow convertible as the pair drove down Gates Street, a stone’s throw from the Legion.
“Fellows was agitated with me and wanted to know why he was stopped,” Muldoon recalled in his report on the incident. “Fellows accused me of harassment (and) opened his door and began to get out of the vehicle.” Muldoon said he asked Fellows to stay in the car but Fellows insisted he needed to get out in order to get his driver’s license and it was when he did that that the officer spotted a 20-inch hard wood “billy club” with a leather strap handle “concealed at the feet of Fellows” according to the report. “I asked Fellows what the club was for and Fellows began to reach for the club. I told him not to reach for the club,” Muldoon wrote. “Fellows stated the club was not a weapon and was only there for his protection. He was offended that I was asking him about drugs,” Muldoon added, noting that he could smell “a slight odor of an alcoholic beverage emitting from his person” as Fellows spoke.
While Muldoon and Fellows got into a discussion of the nuances of Vermont’s dangerous weapons statute, other police officers began to arrive, including a Lebanon officer who brought along a drug-sniffing police dog that quickly did an “active alert” by putting his front paws on the driver’s side door of Fellows’ convertible. “Fellows reacted by saying the city would have to pay for a new paint job to his vehicle,” Muldoon wrote, adding, “I checked the area where the dog put his paws – no scratches or damages were seen.”
“Fellows remained agitated during the stop,” Muldoon recalled, continuing that “Fellows stated there were no drugs in the car (and) the only thing he had was a straw in his pocket that he had just used to snort his prescription Oxycodone.”
A consent search of the convertible turned up a marijuana pipe in the center console and a plastic straw with white powder inside. Fellows was arrested for DUI after he blew a 0.100 percent blood alcohol level on a breath test given at the scene.
Fellows faces a maximum potential penalty of up to 12 years in prison if he were to be convicted of the charges now pending against him and Cook faces a potential maximum of five years in her case.
